CORPSEGRINDER — Corpsegrinder (review)

CORPSEGRINDER — Corpsegrinder album cover

Album · 2022 · Death Metal

3/5 · 2022-02-27
siLLy puPPy

George Fisher better known as CORPSEGRINDER is best known as the lead guttural growler of Cannibal Corpse since he joined ranks as far back in 1995 but got his start prior in a band called Monstrosity and since has served as chief growler in Paths of Possession, Serpentine Dominion and Voodoo Gods while retaining his role in America’s most authentically pure old school death metal band. Now in 2022 he can add a new task to his resume and that is in being a solo artist. Yep, CORPSEGRINDER just can’t get enough of that old school death metal madness and delivers another slice of it in full old school fury.

Well solo album in name only really. Of course this is a band experience and no ole CORPSY doesn’t play the instruments at all. Rather he incorporates the talents of newest Cannibal Corpse member Erik Rutan on guitars, guitarist / bassist Charlie Bellmore of Kingdom of Sorrow, Kings and Liars, Phantoms and Treebeard and his brother Nick Bellmore also of Kingdom of Sorrow and Phantoms as well as Toxic Holocaust. The stage is set for a caustic uproar of old school death metal rage and CORPSEGRINDER delivers the goods in the fullest fury! This self-titled debut clocks in at only 31 minutes but as expected follows in the footsteps of you know who - Cannibal Corpse!

Personally i’ve never gotten too overly excited about Cannibal Corpse. Yeah, they scratch that old school death metal itch by keeping the style alive and well far into the 21st century but basically i find them to be the epitome of generic old school death metal in virtually every way. They’ve even been called the AC/DC of death metal. OK. Well, CORPSEGRINDER hasn’t deviated from the formula at all. No, there are no industrial or black metal crossovers or anything remotely experimental. Rather this eponymously titled debut is basically another Cannibal Corpse styled album albeit with its own personality that for the attentive listener will come off as something that exists outside that band’s established stylistic approach but not too far from the tree.

Basically this is a well played old school death metal album complete with that distinct early 90s album cover art that will remind you of, guess who! Cannibal Corpse but also other similarly minded bands of the 90s like Massacre, Toxik, early Death and other who loved those semi-cheesy early shock value horror visuals. Basically what you get here is no nonsense “i don’t wanna leave the 90s” death metal and in that regard it delivers all the goods in abundance. Brutal guitar riffs, bantering bass and drums and all the guttural growls you could hope for but on the other end of the stick, death metal has branched out into a massive tree of splinter genres this far into the future and the game has been upped manyfold since old school death metal’s heyday. This is retro as fuck and and although CORPSEGRINDER delivers a few moments of energetic deathcore to the recipe, basically this is a dedicated tribute to the past. Cool but not brilliant. Basically average but if you love Cannibal Corpse you can’t go wrong here either.